The thing is in order to expand and grow you need new ideas. tougher IP laws actually restrict new ideas and slow down development. That is why China and India have or ignore IP laws. It is why after WWII the USA ignored IP laws for 30 plus years.

however when you get complacent you make tougher IP laws, which prevents someone else from taking a good idea and moving it in another direction. Think of the number of Patents in a cell phone or even worse a smart phone and realize that those patents are from the 1990's.

The tighter you grip on imaginary property the less you are likely to dream up something new.

While GoDaddy are a bunch of scummy toadies, they aren't the real problem. The real problem is the tendency of those in power to abuse their power. Today it is the secret service and godaddy, tomorrow it could easily be some other government and some other DNS provider.

Ultimately the only solution is to decentralize name resolution. Sure that comes with a whole host of problems on its own, starting with trust and reliability. But the current hierarchal DNS is just such an easy single-point-of-choking that it is inevitable that the powerful will abuse it.

It's rather fuckin moot to try to plan ten years ahead when the laws change to being more and more draconian and unconstitutional every couple days/weeks.This is full spectrum disruption. Who dare run a music blog when the lables don't even know what the current law is? Who dare hire employees when health-insurance, and tax is unstable and unpredictable, with a monetary system that is unregulated and corrupt to the fuckin core? Who dare take a loan in this depression/inflation enviornment? Who wants to pay for video bandwidth, when streaming a video is now a felony?

One problem is that the latest "war of the da"y is always profitable to somebody:http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm [lexrex.com]"WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."

War is just not usually beneficial to most people who have to pay the costs (which includes the US taxpayer, as well as all the victims abroad or at home who were in the way...)

And so a society consumes itself, burning itself to the ground because every incremental step makes sense to the fire... Where are the "political" firefighters when we need them?

Major General Smedley Butler, United States Marine Corp, was an extraordinarily brave and devoted Marine who served the United States in an exceptional manner while in uniform, earning two Congressional Medals of Honor - the highest American medal for bravery on the battlefield. Out of uniform and in the realm of politics, however, citizen Butler involved himself in leftist fringe politics. I would be inclined to follow Major General Butler anywhere on the battlefield, but nowhere near a voting booth. In this regard he is like Chomsky [discoverthenetworks.org], a man of exceptional virtual in his field, but a political crank (popular though he may be) and genocide [wikipedia.org] denier [ipa.org.au].

. . . . Back in the 1930s, the U.S. Communist Party recruited a former Marine Corps general, Smedley Butler, to give speeches on the eve of World War II denouncing military preparedness as a capitalist racket. The idea was that by persuading an individual man of valor to propound shameful views, those views would somehow become less shameful. It didn’t work then. I doubt it will work now. - Wesley Who? [nationalreview.com]

Denver: Man Arrested for Providing Material Support to a Designated Foreign Terrorist Organization

Jamshid Muhtorov was arrested by members of the FBI’s Denver and Chicago Joint Terrorism Task Forces on a charge of providing and attempting to provide material support to the Islamic Jihad Union, a Pakistan-based designated foreign terrorist organization. Full Story

Baltimore: Man Pleads Guilty to Attempted Use of a Weapon of Mass Destruction in Plot to Attack Armed Forces Recruiting Center

U.S. citizen Antonio Martinez, aka Muhammad Hussain, pled guilty to attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction against federal property in connection with a scheme to attack an armed forces recruiting station in Catonsville, Maryland. Full Story

Washington Field: Man Pleads Guilty to Shootings at Pentagon, Other Military Buildings

Your post is very selective about the "facts". If enough people keep thinking your way, we are probably doomed for sure in an age where any disgruntled person can download a plague off the internet and feel justified using it out of either retribution or to achieve some objective that they think will make them "secure" by wiping out most everyone else who might in theory be a threat. Maybe we could try being nice to each other for a change and see how that works out for a while?http://www.share-international.org/archives/cooperation/co_nocontest.htm [share-international.org]

Or:http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Prologue [wikiquote.org]" Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.
And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.
Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, the Earth was unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass, and so the idea was lost, seemingly for ever.
This is her story."

Were you one of the protesters against the supposedly justified war against Iraq over non-existent weapons of mass destruction. If not, then what moral authority do you speak from? Who was the aggressor there? Hard to accept the implications. Based on your philosophy, how should the USA be labelled for that endeavor, and what should other countries do about that? Can you explain why most other countries consider the USA a far greater threat to world peace than most of the countries it invades?http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jun/15/usa.iran [guardian.co.uk]

They have also happened in other countries without those countries losing their democracies.

But sadly, the article suggests the worst terrorism these days seems to be coming *out* of the US Capitol and destroying the fabric of US society both economically and socially. See also:http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/ [umanitoba.ca]"OK, what's this book about? It's about what's happened to the American government lately. It's about the disastrous decisions that government has made. It's about the corruption that rotted the Congress. It's about how traditional conservatism has nearly been destroyed by authoritarianism. It's about how the "Religious Right" teamed up with amoral authoritarian leaders to push its un-democratic agenda onto the country. It's about the United States standing at the crossroads as the next federal election approaches."

US warrant will alert Europol and the local Switzerland/Luxembourg authorities in no time. I would think it is more important that the server guy is serving to US audience or US customers, where his server is physically located might be less important.

At this rate data, information and knowledge will be the new thing to smuggle. But there doesn't seem to be a "border"... yet. We will all be the mules. Like anything good they will try and cut it off. Who will be the 21st century's Pablo Escobar?

Companies will always try to invest as little as necessary to keep their revenue high. For most companies, the best of all changes would be exactly none. ANY change means having to adapt to it, and adapting costs money.

Now that the last of the big corps has caught on that it's cheaper to buy laws than to change strategies, the "new" (ok, not soooo new, but think of it in terms of magnitude) way to increase or at least keep revenues high is not to adapt, innovate and improve past the competition, the strategy is to buy laws to eliminate the competition.

And the biggest competition for big (and hence wealthy, and thus able to buy said laws) companies is "the internet". Face it, few of the big ol' ones really benefited from the internet's success. New competition arose and they have an edge. Faster to respond, easier to use for their customers, there's just very little big old ones can do against that directly.

So what they can do is change the rules of the game.

Changing those rules, though, means that the power stays in the hands of old companies and new startups get squashed, not by superior products or better service, but simply by the monetary power to change the rules.

And that's pretty much anathema to capitalism, folks. What we're getting here is the worst kind of socialism. Remember why the USSR fell? Outdated production means that were artificially kept alive while the rest of the world passed them, which made them completely uncompetitive on the global market.

Bottom line is that most corporations, especially large, established ones, are not in favor of free-market capitalism. What they want is crony capitalism - they keep doing exactly the same thing, and the Government makes sure no pesky upstarts who actually do things better or other market changes get in the way. That way, they don't ever have to do anything hard or risky like actually work to continuously improve or anticipate market changes and try to get out in front of them. Relying on Government cheese is much easier (at least until the Government changes...)

Only small businesses actually want free markets, because it means they have a shot at getting to the top if they come up with the right good idea at the right time. And individuals, because it means we keep getting better stuff.

Of course the US governments attitude to websites is going to have an affect on the confidence of website operators to be able to locate there and may make many look at other countries to host it instead. The prosecution of the web site owners for the actions of their users, which they cannot control, most stop, as well as the PIPA and SOPA nonsense, and the country needs to implement full Network Nuetrality. That is a recipe for creating a truly pro-consumer, pro-jobs environment that is also good for website operators.

The fact is that the GOP pretty much is an enemy of freedom, and has for years been the paid agent of the large media corporations which seems to want to trample over free speech turn the webpage in to a one way TV MTV equivalent. Another concerning thing is the fact that the conservatives are regressives and often driven by extreme theocratic tendancies, ready to force their religious ideas and moralities on others and trample over freedom of speech as a result.The high levels of income inequality that the GOP has caused through our low taxes on the wealthy has also been detrimental to other businesses, by draining money out of the pockets of the middle class, and shrinking the middle class significantly. if we really wanted to live in a country that was healthy we would restore the millionaire tax bracket to what it was in the 50s and 60s and elect liberals to office that will respect our freedoms, are not religious whackjobs, who will eliminate ridiculous laws that conservatives try to pass that lead to censorship and try to force the government into deciding what is "indecent", the government has no right to decide such a thing and things which are indecent cannot be censored, but we have social conservatives in the GOP who are basically totalitarian theocrats who would like to destroy free speech and force their religious moralities on everyone. We dont need a bigoted, theocratic religious whackjob religious nutjobs banning harmless and consensual activities such as pornography and other harmless, indecent things.

There needs to be a internet bill of rights that would also ban any censorship, that would prohibit ISPs or government from storing any information on traffic that can be used to monitor individual users such as source and destination IPs and so on, would stop ISPs from discriminating against certain traffic and so on. The fear based tactic they so often used exploits anxieties, and obscure the fact that any action or policy is not justifiable to prevent crime, such as survellience, tracking and monitoring without warrant are unacceptable in a free society and these things cannot be justified in order to prevent crime. If we allow these activities we open the door as well to their abuse by corporations and governments, they are perfect tools for trying to keep track of people who have unpopular views and opinons, and use that information against them. The less right to privacy people have, the less safe they are.

Many large corporations , such as the major record labels, have interests opposite that of small businesses and common people. Their goal is to maintain and consolidate wealth and that means hoarding and consolidating wealthy by suppressing the wages of other workers and using their control over large parts of the money to basically consolidate wealthy. We need common, average people to have a lot of money in their pocket and to avoid having certain corporations dominating much of that, through suppression of wages, thus crowding out small businesses as well as impoversiing common workers. The policies that the wealthy elite hate the most, a high income and corporate tax on the wealthy, is exactly what the country needs to put more money back into average peoples pockets and to give workers more power such as through unions, all things that will give common people more spending power, money to buy things other than to shop at wal mart. The attacks on unions and the demands for more tax cuts for the rich are ultimately unhealthy, they allow a few corporations t

One question is that it is probably more the Democrats than the GOP Republicans who are in bed with Hollywood, according to this previous slashdot article:http://politics.slashdot.org/story/12/02/03/1322205/how-the-gop-and-the-tea-party-helped-kill-sopa [slashdot.org] ""Strengthening intellectual property enforcement has been a bipartisan issue for the past 25 years, but Stewart Baker writes in the Hollywood Reporter that when the fight went from the committees to the floor and Wikipedia wen

Hmm. The US's approach to a global network is somewhat backward -> who wants to do business with us if the mere interaction may result in your extradition from your home country? Since any interaction, including having US customers or storing files on a server located on US-controlled territory, can result in a potential disaster, why take the chance? It's not like the internet infrastructure the US does have is anything special -> we may have cooked up the idea of the internet, but our residential co

One mistake you've made is blaming the GOP, when the Democrats have been at least equally culpable. When it comes to offensive copyright laws, the Democrats have been much more culpable. The GOP are more generally in favor of those who are wealthy, the Democrats (currently) have a narrower base of extremely wealthy people that they support. Neither party is interested in the weal of the electorate.

You do realize we're under a supposed left wing liberal administration at the moment. You know, the ones that just passed a law allowing the government to jail anyone indefinitely without due process by simply labeling them a terrorist. The ones that almost managed to pass PIPA/SOPA. The ones that somehow committed the USA to an international treaty, ACTA, without approval of congress. The ones that granted the teclos retroactive immunity for illegal spying on US citizens. I could go on and on and on.

Actually, if you ignore copyrights, the history is *generally* that the Republicans pass laws that are the enemy of freedom, and the Democrats implement them. You can, of course, find exceptions, but that's how it usually works. You won't find the Democrats acting to repeal the laws that they denounced when the Republican administration passed them, but quite often the passing of a law raises so much anger, that it is left to the next administration to actually start using it.

One of the main reasons I opted for the ISP I'm using for my business is not the fact that they're cheaper (it's only $10/month difference), but the fact that SaskTel hosts their data center in Florida, and the one I'm using is hosted in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

I don't want my business anywhere near US regulation and control without oversight and intervention by Canadian authorities. The US has been proving to be insanely jackbootish about their approach to the internet for the past 2-5 years, and I simply do NOT want to take the chance of having them interfere with my business.

Or rather, I don't want US media companies interfering with my business. They don't do proper checks before issuing their takedown requests, and were I in the US, I'd be effectively subject to domain seizure and content takedowns without due process and the chance to defend myself. That is an UNACCEPTABLE BUSINESS RISK when it is so easy to avoid.

Worse, the US dollar is in such a sorry state that I will not be accepting payments in greenbacks. I want to be paid in a stable currency that I don't have to pay exchange rates on in order to spend -- namely Canadian dollars. For years I've had to pay extra to convert my Canadian currency to US dollars to pay for goods and services ordered out of the US. The shoe is on the other foot now.

Even if I work a contract in the US for a US company, I'll either be paid in Canadian dollars or charging a 5% premium for the hassle of converting US currency to Canadian dollars (it's a 2-3% bank fee as well, so 5% isn't as much as you might think.) Add in the fact that all foreign payments get held by the bank for 30 days, and the resulting lost opportunity cost of having my money tied up and inaccessible, and I find I really don't have much interest in business south of the border at all right now.

Besides, if I have to travel to service a customer, I may as well visit somewhere I've never been before, preferably China, Australia, New Zealand, or Germany. (I've just always wanted to see those countries some day. I've already spent about 12 years living and working in the US, so I've seen the US. I want to see someplace different next.)

I had a site shut down, when I get back on my feet, I'm going to take it to Canada... this is NOT as easy as moving the server!

As I plan my recovery, I'm learning that it isn't enough to just move your server over there. You've got to actually *be* Canadian if you don't want your site taken down. (sure, you could lie about it, make it appear to be from Canada or Panama or wherever, but if you're in business, this is hardly a viable option.. they'll find out you're really a US citizen) for me, this means finding a very trusted Canadian to "take over" for awhile, until I can collect enough material to prove myself worthy of Canadian citizenship.

From what I've studied, the problem is the lobbyist influences. Startups do NOT donate money to campaigns, most of them will never donate to campaigns because most start-ups fail. If you want to make it in the US, you have to have enough money to hire lobbyists that are more powerful than competitors lobbyists. It really is that simple.

For most of us, the plutocratic system of government is irrelevant, but if your small niche business threatens the established companies who are running the country, AND they notice you (or your industry), you can expect them to run you out.

Ultimately, we can look forward to these same lobbyists pushing OTHER countries around, much as the US already does for the oil lobby. It'll be interesting to hear them justify a war with Panama or Canada, it'd be nice if the citizens wised up to the game before then, but I'm not holding my breath.

USA is very dangerous to start ANY business, not just a web business. With all of the taxes, regulations, inflation caused by counterfeiting operation at the Fed and the government banks. The confiscation of private property that was clearly displayed in GM and Chrysler case and just a couple of months ago with MF Global [slashdot.org] - where cooperation between financial institution (JP Morgan) and government agencies allowed for customer funds to be stolen, in fact gold bars with serial numbers assigned to specific holders of account at MF Global (which is basically an insurance company for farmers - future trading is used to insure against uncertainty of future crop prices) went "MISSING" and nobody is being held accountable for it and apparently everybody is aware that JP Morgan and the feds have agreed on something, which is pretty damning - the bankruptcy court was instructed to run the bankruptcy as if MF Global was an 'investment' company, which makes their counter-parties to be first in line to receive collateral, while actually MF Global wasn't an investment company, it was an insurance company, and under those conditions it would have been the CLIENTS who would be first in line to get their money out.

But this is just an example why it is dangerous to deal in USA now, other things are of-course all of the regulations, all of the executive branch departments acting as if they are the Congress and as if they can pass laws, the fact that US courts are on the side of the government in all of this.

Again, it's not just about web businesses. Don't forget, as Steve Jobs told Obama - those jobs, they are not coming back.

This is why we need three things done to make the USA more business friendly:

1) Review EVERY business regulation "on the books" as US Federal law and see if any of them need to be phased out due to the law being obsolete or unneeded.

2) Drastically overhaul the income tax code to reduce yearly compliance costs and encourage way more savings and capital investment in the USA. I'd recommend going with the no-loophole 17% flat tax that Steve Forbes proposed back in 1996--a tax system if implemented would send t

This is why we need three things done to make the USA more business friendly:

1) Review EVERY business regulation "on the books" as US Federal law and see if any of them need to be phased out due to the law being obsolete or unneeded.

OK. I'm in favor of every law having an expiration date. If a law isn't worth passing every 20 years, it's not worth having.

2) Drastically overhaul the income tax code to reduce yearly compliance costs and encourage way more savings and capital investment in the USA. I'd recommend going with the no-loophole 17% flat tax that Steve Forbes proposed back in 1996--a tax system if implemented would send the US economy into the stratosphere within 18 months because it would make the USA one of the world's most friendly places to do business from a tax regulation perspective.

OK. I'm in favor of a y = mx + b tax plan myself. But one needs to include b as well a m. I don't know whether 17% is the correct value for m, but b should be, at most, the negative of the official poverty level.

3) Severely reign in Wall Street by tightening liquidity requirements for investments, increasing the minimum margin requirements for futures trading to 20%, re-impose the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, and requiring the President, members of the Cabinet, members of Congress or any judge in the US Appeals Court system or the Supreme Court to put into a "blind and dumb" trust all stock and bond holdings or must sell them off. That way, Washington, DC is far less influenced by self interest of stock and bond holdings.

One thing that's needed is a per transaction tax. Preferably one that decreases more the longer you hold the stock. Something like a tax that is linear between a 100% ta

You obviously have never started a business! The US is pretty safe on the balance given the rule of law. I've started and operated businesses in the US and Thailand, and investigated starting businesses in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Cambodia, Singapore, Australia, Sweden, and Ireland. While HK and Singapore (arguably Ireland, but that is a bigger reach) are much more tax-friendly than any of the others, each country has significant risks. By comparison, the US is the easiest place to make money and build a long-lasting business.

Now... there are plenty of stupid regulations that you deal with, and there are certain aspects of taxation that are fairly oppressive for a small business (namely being taxed on retained earnings rather than just draw or other money taken out of the business). The whole MAFIAA crap needs to stop, and patent law needs a makeover, to be sure. But, in your daily life you don't have to worry about who needs to be bribed, what regulations exist simply for someone to collect a bribe to look the other way... or what your competitor might be able to do to you without any recourse on your end.

Manufacturing is a different story. And, if you are doing anything borderline illegal, sure... you may have some concerns. Also, things change when your revenue is over a certain amount as to what place is most advantageous.

Specific to JotForm, they got screwed because someone was using their service for phishing. They discovered it, stopped it, and the SS shut them down in parallel. If they needed a service that was more resilient, they could have planned differently.

The moral of the story is plan for confiscation of equipment or domains when running an online business. Maximize resiliency.

I am facing this "problem" of soon having to choose if I will locate my new company avoiding USA or not. Business will be 100% legal, but the US web-policies appear very unfrindly. Recently I've been thinking (most positively) about using only EU investors, EU-site, EU-domain but it may be hard to avoid all e.g. Visa / Paypal / Mastercard connections to USA. Maybe it's worth it maybe not. But for me the news topic is true, The US Government is Scaring Web Businesses Out of the US - or at least it's doing it

That should be a lesson that US authorities can reach out and touch you no matter where you are. Granted, they may have been breaking some laws. But the emphasis here is on may. Sites have been shut down prior to a court verdict.

You want a system that features redundancy (multiple hosting sites, distributed between several jurisdictions) and untraceability (feed content through encrypted TOR pipes). Once some sites have been located and their owners identified (and inevitably some will) you'll need to have the ownership of those sites hidden behind some shell corporations. Likewise, you'll have to hide your income source within a different corporate structure. By all means, pay your taxes. But avoid the extravagant lifestyle and braggadocio of Dotcom [wikipedia.org]. The ideal lifestyle to adopt would be that of fictional character Johnathan Higgins [wikipedia.org]. Just a lowly caretaker of some other rich guy's* mansions and yachts. But make sure you pay the taxes on those as well.

*A fictional Saudi Prince would be a good choice. F*ck with him and the US risks losing its middle east ally. A Chinese businessman/Communist party operative would be better. F*ck with him and have all your loans called in.

Which registrars take the position contractually that the domain is the property of the registrant and will not be taken down without a court order? Find a registrar that doesn't have "sole discretion" language like this, from Network Solutions:
We may terminate this Agreement or any part of the Network Solutions services at any time
in the event you breach any obligation hereunder, fail to respond within ten (10) calendar days to an
inquiry from us concerning the accuracy or completeness of the information referred to in Section 4 of
this Agreement, if we determine in our sole discretion that you have violated the Network Solutions
Acceptable Use Policy... or for any other reason in Network Solutions' sole discretion upon written
notice to you.

Is slashdot scaring away developers with more political submissions? Remember when there used to be a Developer section instead of all this political BS?

Are you trying to make a point? Do you not remember that Slashdot has always had technology related political articles going way back? Do you remember when Slashdot had all those articles in the 90s about the Microsoft trials about their monopoly?

Can you explain to me why we're posting with rhetorical questions?

Is this some sort of method of attracting attention?

I don't know. Awe shit! Did I just blow the rhetorical question there here?

... through arguing over resource allocation. According to "Conceptual Guerilla", mainstream economics is just mainly a mythological cover story to justify elites:"The Mythology of Wealth"http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402 [conceptualguerilla.com]

Example:http://www.responsiblefinance.ch/appeal/ [responsiblefinance.ch]"The authors of this appeal are deeply concerned that more than three years since the outbreak of the financial and macroeconomic crisis that highlighted the pitfalls, limitations, dangers and responsibilities of main-stream thought in economics, finance and management, the quasi-monopolistic position of such thought within the academic world nevertheless remains largely unchallenged. This situation reflects the institutional power that the unconditional proponents of main-stream thought continue to exert on university teaching and research. This domination, propagated by the so-called top universities, dates back at least a quarter of a century and is effectively global. However, the very fact that this paradigm persists despite the current crisis, highlights the extent of its power and the dangerousness of its dogmatic character. Teachers and researchers, the signatories of the appeal, assert that this situation restricts the fecundity of research and teaching in economics, finance and management, diverting them as it does from issues critical to society."

And also the similarly named:http://www.amazon.com/Economics-Rest-Us-Debunking-Science/dp/1595581014 [amazon.com]"Why do contemporary economists consider food subsidies in starving countries, rent control in rich cities, and health insurance everywhere "inefficient"? Why do they feel that corporate executives deserve no less than their multimillion-dollar "compensation" packages and workers no more than their meager wages? Here is a lively and accessible debunking of the two elements that make economics the "science" of the rich: the definition of what is efficient and the theory of how wages are determined. The first is used to justify the cruelest policies, the second grand larceny. Filled with lively examples--from food riots in Indonesia to eminent domain in Connecticut and everyone from Adam Smith to Jeremy Bentham to Larry Summers--Economics for the Rest of Us shows how today's dominant economic theories evolved, how they explicitly favor the rich over the poor, and why they're not the only or best options. Written for anyone with an interest in understanding contemporary economic thinking--and why it is dead wrong--Economics for the Rest of Us offers a foundation for a fundamentally more just economic system."

i don't really agree with you, but what i do understand is that in any society where the rich receive too large a share of the wealth, fairness finds a way to reassert itself, by any means possible, including new ideology

conservatives: favoring the rich destroys people's faith in the idea that the system is fair. when that is destroyed, the society is eventually headed towards revolution, as they do not believe their interests are represented by their government

There is nothing fair about majority vote using government violence as a proxy to steal money from individuals who are more successful than others.

Also there is nothing fair about some individuals gaming the system by buying access to politicians, who then steal and sell power of government violence.

Both of the above are wrong, that's why your argument is nonsense.

Under a system where government is actively prohibited from stealing from anybody to give to anybody else under any and all circumstances, the freedom of everybody who is not being stolen from is maximised, and the market increases the wealth of all people by allowing some to make it big by inventing and bringing to the market products that make ALL people wealthier.

That's why Steve Jobs and his wealth usually was not bemoaned by people - because everybody got WEALTHIER off Steve Jobs, who himself got extraordinary wealthy.

Of-course Marxists like you, are happy to use any amount of collective government violence to ensure that the wealth is "distributed equally", which means unproductively from people who CREATE wealth, to those who WANT it. Thus eventually you descend into totalitarianism and dictatorship, and you call THAT justice.

No. Justice is about freedom. The only justice is FREEDOM. It's freedom to do what you can as you can do it without hurting others (that's the only main condition), and in the process of helping yourself you help others not as an intention, but as a consequence of your actions.

Nobody can become rich and wealthy without either:1. Theft based on power of government force.2. Creation of wealth by selling products to people that they are voluntarily willing to buy and pay enough that there is a profit premium in it.

There is nothing just about "universal" healthcare or any other government forced "universal" thing, because it will create poverty and will bring about totalitarian regime and there is nothing just about such a regime, and I should know I was born in a system like that, and you'll find out, you apparently want to go there.

If the value of something depends on government action, or governmental granted monopolies, then don't talk about it being unfair for the government to "steal" it. Unless you enjoy looking like a hypocrit.

there are plenty of people who are poor in this world through their own character failures

there are plenty of people who are rich because of hard work

but you seem unable to understand why some are rich: not because of hard work. but through a power structure that rewards them for doing nothing but knowing the right people

and some are poor even though they have the right character, but they exist in a society that is structured in such a way they have no avenue to better themselves

and, more ominously, why some are rich and some are poor is more and more because of the latter reasons than the former reasons

where you fail in your ideology is that the world is not the cold war world anymore. you have a perception in your judgments of a society that seems fix on 1962 in a certain place that does exist anymore. your thinking is antiquated

My thinking is not antiquated, your thinking is antiquated, it's all rotten to the core and it is what is destroying the economies of Europe and US right now, whether you understand it or not.

The only way to fix the problem of overall poverty is to allow markets to work it out, that's what Chinese are mostly doing - allowing capital to come in and create whatever it creates thus improving people's circumstance.

The people can either be left alone and let the market create all the things that they need and se

you have this odd, bizarre belief that natural market forces create wealth distribution is somehow fair

- of-course.

that's because I completely reject your version of 'fair' - take from somebody who has and give it to somebody who does not simply because one of them is suffering more. I denounce and reject this type of social entropy, it does not work and it is absolutely unfair, unproductive and dictatorial in nature. How can any amount of violence be fair?

You are defining something as FAIR and you are using VIOLENCE to define it. You want 'fair'? How about you examine your premises first and realise that w

if a society does not function fairly, the lessons of history are clear: revolution

it is a shame that societies often have to go through violent, bloody revolution, rather than merely make rules to make wealth distribution more fair, simply because of the existence of blind ignorant fools such as yourself

Doesn't have to be the elite who suffer. In Russia, it was the landowners. They were thrown in gulags in Siberia.

I am a big fan of capitalism. I think communism is a response to excesses, and the world is moving towards that. I recently watched a programme called Panorama on the BBC. The program was looking at the plight of the poor in the USA. The indignity of American citizens having to queue up in the small hours of the morning to get a chance to see a doctor who will work for free was shocking. And that

If you think one in 6 Americans chose poverty, then you are seriously deluded. Your country has a problem. The rich have commandeered all the resources of the country, and realistically, those 50 million people have to work for them or not work at all. They do not have land (they were born without it), they do not have access to the means of production, and they do not have capital, or access to capital to be able to work themselves out of the mess they are in. Even access to education, the key tool by which the poor could lift themselves out of poverty, is now dependent on money. So basically, they have no realistic hope of competing with the haves.

The American economy is now dominated by super large corporations and there is no way for most small businesses to compete.Yes, a few thousands out of the 50 million may be able to pick themselves out of

I don't think anyone is advocating getting rid of capitalism, but its excesses must surely be tempered. There are many examples of countries that are fantastically wealthy, and yet seem to have a much better balance between wealth and poverty than the USA. Countries were pretty much no one can be bankrupted by medical bills, where access to quality education is based on ability and hard work, rather than whether or not an 18 year old can afford it. America seems to believe it is OK to punish children for the sins of their parents.

Since most material wealth is now created through machines that need fairly little maintenance, and most intellectual wealth has historically been created as a labor of love by voluntary community interactions and in any case we now have so much of it, your whole point is obsolete (if it was ever really true). See also:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit [wikipedia.org]

Also, remember that most land is "owned" by people who got it through some chain that eventually arrives at either finders-keepers or might-makes-rig

According to Douglas, the true purpose of production is consumption, and production must serve the genuine, freely expressed interests of consumers. Each citizen is to have a beneficial, not direct, inheritance in the communal capital conferred by complete and dynamic access to the fruits of industry assured by the National Dividend and Compensated Price.

- this is pretty sick stuff, truly remarkably ridiculously insane.

This destroys the very idea of private property and just like the ideas that created the place where I was born (USSR), it requires people to negate their most basic instincts of ownership of things that they create.

As to land owners, etc., if the land owner isn't efficient with his property, he'll be generating a loss, not a profit, and eventually either will sell the land himself to somebody (or to more than one person) who will find ways

"We can't have a society at all where everybody expects to be taken care of by some magic of 'past social credit', somebody has to do the actual work of creating the stuff, whatever it means, and it really means organising land labour and capital in the most efficient manner to give the market something that will be profitable enough to keep the lights on."

Tell that to Linus Torvalds and all the Debian GNU/Linux maintainers. Kids should tell that to their parents and adopters too. There are many ways of org

Tell that to Linus Torvalds and all the Debian GNU/Linux maintainers. Kids should tell that to their parents and adopters too. There are many ways of organizing how things get done based on what values we want to celebrate.

- ARE you telling me that the is GOVERNMENT force standing behind them, with machine guns, ready to fire?

No, wait, what is the point you are trying to make? Either you are predicating your ideology on government power and violence or you are talking about voluntary exchange of some sort, and I have nothing about voluntary exchanges of any kind for any purpose at any time.

So what is your argument about, do you want government to FORCE people into your paradise or are you talking about voluntary participatio

The only justice is that which is defined by society, generally in the form of laws. We give men rights (they are not inherent) so that we may more fairly structure our societies; the rights of society are paramount. What you advocate is totalitarianism in the form of monarchy; the ultimate expression of your philosophy is one man who owns the whole world. Concentration of wealth *diminishes* its utility, even your anarcho-capitalist textbooks should teach you that.

Of-course Marxists like you, are happy to use any amount of collective government violence to ensure that the wealth is "distributed equally", which means unproductively from people who CREATE wealth, to those who WANT it. Thus eventually you descend into totalitarianism and dictatorship, and you call THAT justice.

There has to be some logical step between "equal distribution of wealth" and "dictatorship". I think you need to be a little more explicit in step two. [stackoverflow.com] Or just y'know, admit that you're scarred by personal experiences and you're trying to rationalize what is inherently an emotional argument that has nothing to do with the real world. There is no useful pure philosophy, in attempting to argue for one you're revealing yourself as a nutcase (and harming your cause).

I found the article [conceptualguerilla.com] you pointed to at the Conceptual Guerilla [conceptualguerilla.com] to be an interesting piece at a site devoted to cutting edge progressive thought and politics. I think I've found a companion piece of similar gravitas [thepeoplescube.com] over at The People's Cube [thepeoplescube.com].

Of course no web article is going to cover material like this in any real depth. Anyone wishing to explore related themes may want to consider some of the following books by prominent African American economist Thomas Sowell [hoover.org]:

What we're actually seeing is the open source community maturing. Since Slashdot was one of the first major gathering points for open source advocates, we're seeing this maturation happen here first.

While open source software had its roots in the political upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s, the number of true old-timers ("neckbeards", if you will) pales in comparison to the younger generation who really made open source software take off. I'm talking about the Linuses and the Alan Coxes and now even those open source advocates born after 1990.

These younger people are finally seeing how important politics is in any movement. They're now seeing that the technology is one part of the pie, but playing the political game is another big chunk. You're damn right that politics is becoming more important to these people!

Technology is so intertwined with politics these days that you can't unwind them. You get them both, and you need to learn to enjoy it this way.

"Technology is so intertwined with politics these days that you can't unwind them."

Great post. Lawrence Lessig says in his book "Code 2.0" that there are at least four ways to influence behavior (a key issue in politics). The are rules, norms, prices, and (computer and other) architecture.http://codev2.cc/ [codev2.cc]

This "political BS" effects the livelihoods of many of the people that read/..

Honestly, I come here to read stories like this more than anything, because lord knows that the Mainstream Media doesn't give a fuck about covering this shit. We didn't even hear a peep about SOPA in the media until the fucking boycotts, months after it was making waves through the tech sites.

Dude, the days when slashdot was read attentively by developers and other IT decision-makers is long past (just don't tell that to InfoWorld, which still pays a premium to astroturf here).

This is a tech-and-gadget flavored Newser.com, with open-source stories replacing the celebrity bits ("Linux instead of Lohan!"). Wired Magazine was exclusive and tech-elite when it started as well, and now it's all "Green Energy" and Rolex ads.

The word "geek" has lost all meaning; one need only note all the slick sales-

Slashdot is enduring as the best technology oriented hive-mind on the whole Internet. Insights you get here are often rare and unparalleled. I bet lots of new devs and also industry veterans still around.

The problem is that most companies doesn't like the US law, so they are leaving. Wasn't that the entire point of this article?

No, the point is that in the US's treatment of Internet sites, the law is now clearly irrelevant. The current poster child is JotForm, whose domain name was shut down for no stated reason, without a court warrant, and there's not even a suggestion that JotForm was violating any law. In fact, the jotform.com name was eventually restored, but the authorities involved haven't stated why the action was taken.

The general understanding is that it was probably a "mistake", i.e., the agencies involved didn't

Not sure if you're a troll or an idiot. JotForm and Dajaz1 both had their sites returned after the feds admitted that there had been no wrongdoing but they'd been shut down anyway, and Rojadirecta (which is still offline) actually had a court judgment saying it was legal.

so why hasn't someone made a complaint against them> I mean, if a cop decides to beat me for no reason, he gets investigated (and if there's evidence) gets convicted. If a federal agent shuts down a website with no court order, are they just as much breaking the law?

I mean, if a cop decides to beat me for no reason, he gets investigated (and if there's evidence) gets convicted.

Yeah, right. More likely he gets a paid vacation for a few weeks (if even that), a slap on the wrist, and then he's back on the streets to abuse people just like he learned back in grade school bullying his classmates.

Cops can't get "Top Secret - Classified" stamped all over the wrong things they do which makes it easier to hold them accountable. The Feds on the other hand, just hide everything under the "threat to national security" blanket and good luck proving anything against them while it's still relevant there.

Do you *ever* follow one of those stories? Even one of the high profile ones, where there is live footage of the assault? A policeman shot a guy after he'd forced him to lie down on the floor, the guy died, the policeman got a month off.

I suppose that sometimes there is a policeman who is punished as the law would require of a normal person, but I haven't run across a report of such an instance. The absolure *worst* I've ever heard of happening is that the policeman was fired. A couple of years later. (In that instance he was hired by someone else almost immediately.)

Have you ever done IT in a professional environment or worked outside a university or small business?

Here is a lesson for you. Rule #1 these systems absolutely, positively, can not go down. Why? Because you are talking tens to hundres of thousands an hour of lost productivity for their customers. Technology is so integrated in corporate America today that the workers will just sit there and chat and browse slashdot and Yahoo news if their work is on JotForm. Business customers can go out of business if they can't work in a day. Razor thin 5% profit margins and uptight customers who need work done YESTERDAY will refuse to do business with them if they fail to meet a deadline. A day or two downtime can cost millions of lost business and productivity to US businesses and JotForm itself.

JotForm is doomed.

For JotForm this means lost customers and a bankruptacy.I sure as hell would not do business with them. If I owned a business I would jump ship and look for a foreign rival in a friendly country like India or Communist China where I do not have to lose all my money I saved going to the cloud that was lost by the US Government. Go read the comments in Jotform? The users do not give a shit and are furious! I would be too if I invested tens of thousands and lost up to millions the past 2 days while this has been sorted out.

Infact if I ever move up the corporate ladder or own a business I will stipulate in my contract that it has to be done overseas or have a backup there if something happens to the US servers. I know I angered some slashdotters who work in IT or are looking for work at cloud providers but tough shit. I have a business to run and sorry but vote for people who wont scare us away from US investments. Yes this is bad as I feel like an asshole for even stating that but with jobs on the line and hundreds of thousands of dollars and hour in lost productivity all risks need to be analyized. People get fired for picking solution providers who fail and yes these customers need to protect themselves.

This and the fact that the FBI just raids ISPs offices and takes servers with hundreds of domains awya with them is scary as hell. It doens't matter Chrylis if they are later found innocent. If you owned the hosting company you are done.

We're arguing on the same side; the parent to my post got modded into oblivion. He said that if you're legal, you have nothing to fear; I'm pointing out that several legal sites have already been blown away for exactly the reasons you describe.

For JotForm this means lost customers and a bankruptacy.I sure as hell would not do business with them. If I owned a business I would jump ship and look for a foreign rival in a friendly country like India or Communist China where I do not have to lose all my money I saved going to the cloud that was lost by the US Government. Go read the comments in Jotform? The users do not give a shit and are furious! I would be too if I invested tens of thousands and lost up to millions the past 2 days while this has been sorted out.

Exactly, the FBI pretty much signed JotForm's "death warrant" by "oops, we didn't really have a reason to shut them down".There's no longer a rule of law where you are "innocent until *proven* guilty", they don't need to go to a judge with *proof* of some wrongdoing, they can just shut you down at a whim and kill your business. As long as that continues, it makes sense for business to flee the country.

Much the same idea as the whole MF Global thing - they blatantly *steal* customer money, the big banks col

...until they change the law to make what you're doing illegal. And these days it's "the competition" writing the law through the use of their lobbyists and contributions. It's not like they are even trying to hide this fact. It's right in front of your face.

Yeah, right. That's about as stupid as the "If you have nothing to hide..." bullshit.

The government doesn't even need to prove that you (or your users) did anything wrong before they punish you. Look at the Jotform crap for proof of that. That business is more than likely ruined now; who's gonna trust a cloud storage site that could get nuked off the face of the internet again because some random asshole posted something that violates IP somewhere on it?

I really hope to God you were being sarcastic, and if so, will gladly accept my "WOOOOOOSH".

Money quote from the ARS article, from a non-American user of Internet services: "I will now have to question purchasing any more services from US internet related providers."

Australian businesses are now being urged to avoid doing any business at all with American companies, as the simple use of outsourcing data processing to an American-based company gives Uncle Sam the impression that he owns the data.

If you don't see the severity of this, then your eyes are most definitely NOT OPEN.

I'm an American living in Europe, and am slowly migrating all of my Internet "things" away from the States as I fear a corrupt, power-hungry US government run amok. Let me respond to your statement with two simple questions and answers:

1) Am I trafficking in child porn, pirated software or anything else illegal? OF COURSE NOT.2) Am I concerned that parts of my websites will suddenly be unavailable due to some police investigation on a third party that I do business with, causing financial damages to me that the US Gubment could care less about? HELLZ YEAH.

If you are not a citizen or resident of the country that shuts down the service that you are a customer of then you are of little or no consequece to the legal system there. If you are so far away that you can't easily arrange a face to face meeting with a lawyer that can do something in the justice system where the service is hosted it's going to be difficult, time consuming and expensive to get anything done at all and even then you may still be ignored as a non-citizen.So it's not just a US only problem

Some of my own thoughts on that:http://pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html [pdfernhout.net]"This article explores the issue of a "Jobless Recovery" mainly from a heterodox economic perspective. It emphasizes the implications of ideas by Marshall Brain and others that improvements in robotics, automation, design, and voluntary social networks are fundamentally changing the structure of the economic landscape. It outlines towards the end four major alternatives to mainstream economic practice (a basic income, a gift economy, stronger local subsistence economies, and resource-based planning). These alternatives could be used in combination to address what, even as far back as 1964, has been described as a breaking "income-through-jobs link". This link between jobs and income is breaking because of the declining value of most paid human labor relative to capital investments in automation and better design. Or, as is now the case, the value of paid human labor like at some newspapers or universities is also declining relative to the output of voluntary social networks such as for digital content production (like represented by this document). It is suggested that we will need to fundamentally reevaluate our economic theories and practices to adjust to these new realities emerging from exponential trends in technology and society."

I'd far rather pay a predictable first world tax rate and not have my business constantly mired in software patent troll cases and other expensive 'IP' nonsense than pay low taxes and have a completely unpredictable and potentially business-destroying IP environment. But that's just me.

Yes, if you host at a (physical) site that is shared with someone they are interested in.

P.S.: While hosting only original content is a legitimate defense, you can only USE the defense after you've already been taken down. Either you didn't bother to read, or you're a troll. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt.

I wish his actions didn't lend credence to your paranoia. I'll agree that that is not an unlikely outcome, but I really doubt that that's his intention. I believe his intentions are more short range and less idealistic.